The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
§ 52. Moore
Byron’s autobiographical memoirs have perished, perhaps not unhappily for his fame, inasmuch as he “was never written down by anyone but himself”; Moore’s life of his friend (1830), appended to Byron’s Letters and Journals, however, with all its shortcomings, whether from the critical or from the purely historical point of view, will never be laid aside. Moore had previously tried his hand at biography in a superficial but pleasant Life of Sheridan (1825); at a later date, he wrote a Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, of whom he had no personal knowledge as he had of Sheridan and Byron. He also left behind him an autobiography, which was edited, together with his journals and correspondence, by the willing hand of his friend Lord John Russell.